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Treasure Planet is a 2002 American animated science fiction adventure film directed by John Musker and Ron Clements and written by Musker, Clements and Rob Edwards. Produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, it is a science fiction adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island (1883) and the third Disney adaptation of the novel, following Treasure Island (1950) and Muppet Treasure Island (1996). In the film's setting, spaceships are powered by and resemble the 18th-century sailing vessels of the original Treasure Island.
The film features the voices of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short, Roscoe Lee Browne, Emma Thompson, Michael Wincott, Laurie Metcalf, and Patrick McGoohan in his final role. The musical score was composed by James Newton Howard, with songs written and performed by John Rzeznik.
Clements and Musker pitched the concept for the film during production of The Little Mermaid (1989). Development began after they finished their work on Hercules (1997). It employs a novel technique of hand-drawn 2D traditional animation set atop 3D computer animation. With a budget of $140 million, it is the most expensive traditionally animated film to date.
Treasure Planet premiered in Paris on November 6, 2002, and was released in the United States on November 27 by Walt Disney Pictures. It was the first film to be released simultaneously in regular and IMAX theaters. The film was a box-office failure, earning $109 million worldwide against a budget of $140 million. It received generally positive reviews from critics and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards. The film has since gained a cult following.
To help Jim search for the treasure, Doppler commissions the ship RLS Legacy, commanded by feline Captain Amelia and stone-skinned Chief Mate Mr. Arrow. The ship's motley crew seem to be heavily influenced by cook John Silver, whom Jim suspects is the cyborg Bones warned him about. Under the supervision of Silver and his shape-shifting pet Morph, Jim works in the ship's galley, and he and Silver form a tenuous father-son relationship. When the ship encounters a supernova devolving into a black hole, Jim secures the crew's lifelines. A ruthless arachnid crew member named Scroop secretly cuts Arrow's lifeline, sending him into the black hole. As the Legacy escapes the shockwaves, Scroop blames an improperly secured lifeline for Arrow's death. Silver, realizing the truth, comforts Jim.
After reaching Treasure Planet, Jim discovers that the crew are pirates led by Silver, and a mutiny erupts. As Doppler, Amelia, and Morph flee in a lifeboat, Jim retrieves the map. Silver, who cannot bring himself to shoot Jim, allows him to escape with the others. Another pirate shoots down the lifeboat, injuring Amelia.
Jim discovers that the "map" is Morph in disguise, with the real map still on the ship. The four meet B.E.N., a navigational robot who once belonged to Flint and is now missing his primary memory circuit. Jim, Morph, and B.E.N. secretly return to the Legacy and retrieve the map. Scroop fights them, but B.E.N. inadvertently disables the artificial gravity, allowing Jim to kick Scroop overboard into deep space.
Jim's group, upon returning to camp, finds the pirates holding Amelia and Doppler hostage. Silver forces Jim to use the map, which directs them to the huge portal that Flint used to conduct his raids. Its holographic controls allow it to open to any location in the known universe. Realizing that Treasure Planet is actually a giant piece of machinery with the treasure sealed inside its core, Jim directs the portal to open to the planet's treasure room. As the pirates enter and begin collecting the loot, Jim finds the skeleton of Flint, holding B.E.N.'s missing circuit in its hand. After Jim re-installs the circuit, B.E.N. remembers that Flint rigged the planet to self-destruct if anyone entered the treasure chamber. As the planet begins collapsing, Silver attempts to escape with a boatload of treasure, but abandons it to save Jim. The survivors board the Legacy, which becomes damaged and unable to go fast enough to escape the planet's impending destruction. Jim rigs a makeshift sailboard and rides ahead, setting the portal to Montressor Spaceport, and Doppler steers the Legacy through the portal to safety.
Jim finds Silver below decks and allows him to escape. As a farewell gift, Silver gives Jim and Morph a handful of treasure he had salvaged from Flint's hoard. Back on Montressor, Jim uses the treasure to help Sarah rebuild their inn, with B.E.N. becoming a waiter. Doppler and Amelia marry and start a family, and Jim, having matured under Silver's mentorship, accepts Amelia's offer to become a cadet at the Interstellar Academy.
The film also features a cast including Tony Jay as the narrator, Austin Majors as Jim's younger self, and Jane Carr as Benbow Inn customer Mrs. Dunwitty. The RLS Legacy crew also includes Corey Burton as Onus and Mike McShane as Hands.
Since Musker and Clements wanted to be able to move "the camera around a lot like Steven Spielberg or James Cameron," the delay in production was beneficial since "the technology had time to develop in terms of really moving the camera." Principal animation for the film began in 2000 with roughly 350 crew members working on it. In 2002, Roy Conli estimated that there were around 1,027 crew members listed in the screen credits with "about four hundred artists and computer artists, about a hundred and fifty musicians and another two hundred technologists". According to Conli, Clements wanted to create a space world that was "warm and had more life to it than you would normally think of in a science fiction film", as opposed to the "stainless steel, blue, smoke coming from the bowels of heavily pipe laden" treatment of science fiction. In order to make the film "fun" by creating more exciting action sequences and because they believed that having the characters wear space suits and helmets "would take all the romance out of it", the crew created the concept of the "Etherium", an "outer space filled with atmosphere" and the characters wear 18th-century clothing much like in the original Treasure Island.
Several changes were made late in the production to the film. The prologue of the film originally featured an adult Jim Hawkins narrating the story of Captain Flint in first person, but the crew considered it too "dark" and felt that it lacked character involvement, so it was changed and instead narrated by Tony Jay. The crew also intended for the film to include a sequence showing Jim working on his solar surfer and interacting with an alien child, which was intended to show Jim's more sensitive side and as homage to The Catcher in the Rye. Because of the intention to begin the film with a scene of Jim solar surfing, the sequence had to be cut.
With regard to adapting the characters from the book to film, Ron Clements mentioned that the Jim Hawkins in the book is "a very smart, very capable kid", but they wanted to make Jim start out as "a little troubled kid" who "doesn't really know who he is" while retaining the aforementioned characteristics from the original character. This change was made after Joe Ranft suggested the idea. The "mentor figures" for Jim Hawkins in the novel were Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey, whom John Musker described as "one is more comic and the other's very straight"; these two characters were fused into Dr. Doppler. Clements also mentions that though the father-son relationship between Jim Hawkins and John Silver was present "to some degree" in the book, they wanted to emphasize it more in the film.
Terry Rossio, who worked on the script, later argued the filmmakers made a crucial mistake turning Jim Hawkins into an adolescent. " Treasure Island, the book, is a boy's adventure, about a young cabin boy who matches wits with a crew of bloodthirsty pirates. All of the key scenes are made more dramatic by the fact that it's a young kid who is in danger... Treasure Planet made the kid into a young man. Which dilutes the drama of all the situations, start to finish... Instead of being an amazing and impressive kid, he became a petulant unimpressive teen."
Among the big-name actors, only Pierce and Short had experience with voice acting prior to the making of Treasure Planet. Conli explained that they were looking for "really the natural voice of the actor", and that sometimes it was better to have an actor with no experience with voice work as he utilizes his natural voice instead of "affecting a voice". The voice sessions were mostly done without any interaction with the other actors, but Gordon-Levitt expressed a desire to interact with Murray because he found it difficult to act out most of the scenes between Jim Hawkins and John Silver alone.
There were around forty animators on the crew, and were further divided into teams; for example, sixteen animators were assigned to Jim Hawkins because he appeared on the screen the most, and twelve were assigned to John Silver. To ensure "solidity" in illustration and personality, each major character in the film had a team of animators led by one animation supervisor. Conli mentioned that the personalities of the supervisors affected the final character, citing Glen Keane (the supervisor for John Silver) as well as John Ripa (the supervisor for Jim Hawkins) as examples. The physical appearance, movements, and facial expressions of the voice actors were infused into the characters as well.
When asked if they drew inspiration from the previous film adaptations of Treasure Island for the character designs, Glen Keane said he disliked looking at previous portrayals of a character to "clear his mind of stereotypes", but that he drew some inspiration for the manner by which Silver spoke from actor Wallace Beery, whom he "loved because of the way he talked out of the side of his mouth." For the characterization and design for Jim Hawkins, John Ripa cited James Dean as an important reference because "there was a whole attitude, a posture" wherein "you felt the pain and the youthful innocence", and he also cited the film Braveheart because "there are a lot of close-ups on characters...who are going through thought processes, just using their eyes."
Animators also used , small statues of the characters in the film, as references throughout the animation process. Character sculptor Kent Melton mentioned that the first Disney film to use maquettes was Pinocchio (1940), and that this paved the way to the formation of an entire department devoted to character sculpting. Keane noted that maquettes are not just supposed to be "like a mannequin in a store", but rather has to be "something that tells you the personality" and that maquettes also helped inspire the way actors would portray their roles.
The animators took Deep Canvas, a technology initially developed for Tarzan (1999), and came up with a process they called "Virtual Sets", wherein they created entire 360 degree sets before they began staging the scenes. They combined this process with traditionally-drawn characters in order to achieve a "painted image with depth perception" and enabled the crew to place the camera anywhere in the set and maneuver it as they would maneuver a camera for a live-action film. In order to test how a computer-generated body part (specifically John Silver's cyborg arm) would mesh with a traditionally animated character, the crew took a clip of Captain Hook from Peter Pan (1953) and replaced his arm with the cyborg arm.
The music from the film is largely orchestral in nature, although it includes two pop singles ("I'm Still Here" and "Always Know Where You Are") from The Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik and British pop-rock group BBMak. Both songs were written and performed by John Rzeznik in the film, but BBMak recorded "Always Know Where You Are" for the soundtrack. The Film score was composed by James Newton Howard, who said that the score is "very much in the wonderful tradition of Korngold and Dimitri Tiomkin and Max Steiner." The score has been described as a mixture of modern "classical style" music in the spirit of Star Wars and Celtic music. Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser is credited as the co-composer of the track "Silver Leaves", and is also listed as a soloist in the film's credits. Walt Disney Records released the film's soundtrack album on November 19, 2002. Jerry Goldsmith was also considered to compose the score.
Hasbro released a lineup of Treasure Planet and toys.
A novelization was published by Puffin Books.
It is officially the last Disney animated feature to be presented in fullscreen on its VHS release, as the VHS releases of Brother Bear (2003) and Home on the Range (2004) are presented in widescreen. However, the Disney Movie Club exclusive VHS release of Chicken Little (2005) is presented in fullscreen.
Disney released a 10th Anniversary special edition Blu-ray/DVD combo on July 3, 2012.
Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post, who gave it 4 stars out of 5, stated that the film "boasts the purest of Disney raptures: It unites the generations, rather than driving them apart". Leah Rozen of People stated that the film "has imagination, humor aplenty and moves briskly", and that "the animation, combining traditional and digital techniques, is ravishing." Claudia Puig of USA Today said that the film's most noteworthy feature is "the artful way it combines the futuristic and the retro", and went on to say that the film does not have the "charm of Lilo & Stitch" nor the "dazzling artistry of Spirited Away", but concluded that Treasure Planet is "a capable and diverting holiday season adventure for a family audience." Kim Hollis of Box Office Prophets stated that "there's plenty to recommend the film – the spectacular visuals alone make Treasure Planet a worthwhile watch," though expressing disappointment because she felt that the characters were "not all that creatively rendered".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 2.5 stars out of 4; he felt that a more traditional take on the story would have been "more exciting" and "less gimmicky". Andy Klein of Daily Variety complained about the script, describing it as "listless" and remarked, "If only its script were as amusing as its visuals." A. O. Scott of The New York Times described the film as "less an act of homage than a clumsy and cynical bit of piracy", and went on to say that it is "not much of a movie at all" and a "brainless, mechanical picture". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly described the film as "all cutesy updated fripperies and zero momentum."
In 2020, Petrana Radulovic, writing for Polygon, praised the characters of Jim and Silver, as well as the "I'm Still Here" sequence and stated, the film "is a visual delight, a time capsule of the early 2000s in a way that perhaps no other animated movie of the era is. It boldly, unapologetically pushes the visual limits of genre expectation in a way no Disney movie has since."
| Academy Awards | March 23, 2003 | Best Animated Feature | Ron Clements | |
| Annie Awards | February 1, 2003 | |||
| Outstanding Character Animation | Sergio Pablos | |||
| Outstanding Achievement for Animated Effects in an Animated Production | Peter DeSève | |||
| Outstanding Achievement for Character Design in a Feature Production | Steven Olds | |||
| Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production | Brian Murray | |||
| Emma Thompson | ||||
| Outstanding Achievement for Animated Effects in an Animated Production | Kee Nam Suong | |||
| Golden Reel Award | 2003 | Golden Reel Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR for Animated Feature Film | Dane Davis (supervising sound editor) Julia Evershade (supervising sound/dialogue/adr editor) Andrew Lackey (supervising foley editor) Richard Adrian (sound editor) | |
| Saturn Awards | May 18, 2003 | Best Animated Feature | Treasure Planet | |
| Young Artist Awards | March 29, 2003 | Best Performance in a Voice-Over Role - Age Ten or Younger | Austin Majors |
Director Jun Falkenstein and screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos began early development on Treasure Planet 2. In the sequel, Jim Hawkins and Kate, his love interest and classmate at the Royal Interstellar Academy, must team with Long John Silver to stop the villainous Ironbeard from freeing the inmates of Botany Bay Prison Asteroid. Gordon-Levitt and Murray were set to reprise their roles as Hawkins and Silver and Willem Dafoe was going to voice Ironbeard. Tommy Walter was asked to write and perform songs for the film. However, the sequel was canceled when Treasure Planet did poorly at the box office.
Following the box office failure of (2001), Disneyland planned a second attempt to revive its Submarine Voyage ride with a Treasure Planet theme. These plans were scrapped due to the film experiencing the same financial performance as its predecessor. The attraction ultimately reopened in 2007 as the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, themed to the 2003 Disney/Pixar animated film Finding Nemo.
A series of games collectively called Disney's Treasure Planet: Training Academy (or Disney's Treasure Planet Collection Disney's Treasure Planet Collection Mobygames) was also released in 2002. It was composed of three games ( Broadside Blast, Treasure Racer, and Etherium Rescue), and players with all three games could unlock a fourth game ( Ship Shape).
Jim Hawkins, Captain Amelia, and John Silver appear as playable characters in Disney Heroes: Battle Mode.
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